Friday, April 30, 2010

We don`t have many kayak competitions here in Israel , so when the Israeli Kayak Fishing Forum organised a fishing and kayaking competition we all jumped at the chance to show our competitive spirit.Training was fast and furious an when the day came we were ready and pumped to go.
There were kayakers from most of the kayak clubs in the country and it was an impressive sight to see so many on the start line.
And the winners were all from our Optimist club, Hadas took first place in the womans race, Raanan was first in the mens, Israel came second and Yair third. Arye also won his category, Im still not sure what that one was. Anyway it was a proud moment for all us Optimists at the prizegiving, well done to the winners and also to all those who took place and made it a great day on the water.

Can anyone out there help me, I am not able to add pictures to my blog anymore. If I click on the add picture icon it only gives me the option to add pictures from picassa web albums or from an URL or from my blog. Now I cannot get pictures from my photos unless I upload them to a web album. Is this correct ?

Friday, April 23, 2010

I just spent a week in South Africa visiting my parents, no paddling there as they live many miles from the coast.
They call it the rainbow nation because of the mixture of colors among the population.

The weather has been different this year, lots and lots of rain, and for me coming from the desert it was fantastic to watch the rain clouds gather in the sky, then experience a thunderstorm only to watch it get blown away within the hour and the sun come out again.

I did find something useful for kayaking though. If you are like me and need reading glasses to see the small print on your camera, map or compass while paddling, then you know that its a hassle to change glasses from sunglasses to reading glasses and back
Meet Bondiblu, the sunglasses with the reading lenses set in like bifocals.

I guess its just a matter of getting used to them for a few days, but they look promising and they are almost unnoticable when wearing them. Just what I need for my upcoming Alaska trip

I am still processing the week and may write about it later. But if you are planing to go for the soccer next month I`m sure that you will have a great time. Me, I`ll be going kayaking in Alaska.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Here`s a slide show showing whats been going on at Optimist during the last week. Weather has been getting warmer and the days longer as the summer creeps up on us.
I changed cameras too, I am now using the canon Power shot D10. Almost everyone now owns one of these and it seems like a great camera. It is much faster than my old Olympus, feels a lot more sturdy and seems to be more waterproof, but time will tell on this feature. Up till now I have been disappointed by all the
" Waterproof " cameras that I have bought.
I like the Canon as its quick and easy to use and the pics seem to be better too.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Time to admit defeat, my newest kayak building project has ended in grand failure.

When trying to join the hull and deck of my surf kayak, the discrepancy was so great that even with the help of clamps, as shown in the building manual, I could not get the two halves to meet properly, and eventually the pieces of wood began to crack under the strain .

At this point I decided that the project was not going to finish well and decided to call it a day.
Luckily I had an axe handy for the final moment.

Reasons for failure.
I think the main reason was the incorrect type of plywood. In the instructions Nick mentions marine BS1088-grade okoume plywood and urges not to use anything else. Unfortunately this type and grade is not available here in Israel and I tried to use whatever I could. This was the major cause of failure as the shape didnt work out as planned as warned in the manual.
I think that it would be better to buy the wood cut out as a kit as this will be much more accurately cut than can be done by hand after tracing the plans onto the plywood sheets. Because of the sharp curves and tight angles in the boat the accuracy here seems a critical point and I could not be as accurate as needed.
How do I feel about this failure, well it was an interesting experiment, I lost a bit of time and a number of hours of work and the cost of the materials, but all in all I had fun until the last moment , and at least I have my Petrel which is a great kayak and wonderful in the waves too.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Well I had one of those small video cameras that you wear on you head and then you film what you are looking at. Its got a fixed focus wide angle lens and so the images are a bit distorted and its difficult to film your friends surfing, also the view does not let you see whats behind you as you surf and so there is no way to convey the size of the waves you are surfing.Also if you get water on the lens you only find out at the end of the session. The non stop movement of my head is also a bit distracting, maybe its better to mount the camera somewhere in the deck or on a pole like Justine does. All in all for a first time it wasn`t too bad but more experimenting needs to be done to improve the quality of the film. Its also a bit long and so no hard feelings if you skip through it.